Gaming And The Heroic Life

Video games fuel a fundamental human drive for adventure—like the epic quest to slay zombies, a solo voyage to rescue the princess, or setting off with a clan to defeat the final boss. The desire to be a hero in your journey is something Bobby Angel can relate to. A lifelong gamer, he was the cohost of the God and Gaming series on YouTube and often appears as a guest on Bearded Blevins’s Around the Halo on Twitch. In Gaming and the Heroic Life, Bobby explains that you don’t have to just play the role of hero in a game—you can actually pursue a heroic life by the way you engage the virtual world. Gaming and the Heroic Life is a map to becoming not only a better gamer but also a better person—one who has a purpose and knows where they fit into the world. The book contains three levels: Level One explores why people love games and what games have to do with God. Level Two examines how the Easter eggs of truth, beauty, and goodness in games impact players in much the same way that they impact your relationship with God. Level Three demonstrates how gaming can propel players AFK (away from keyboard) to find purpose and meaning in service to others. Bobby shows where video games intersect with a life of faith in God—how games echo with our call to holiness and how we can respond to that call in both the virtual and real worlds.

"This is a powerful, richly nuanced, evocative work; a stunning and brilliantly innovative pedagogical intervention. It provides ground zero-the starting place for the next generation of theorists who study the self, narrative theory, and the place of games and sport in everyday life. A stunning accomplishment by one of America's major social theorists." Norman K. Denzin, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Games of many kinds have been played in all cultures throughout human history. This wide-ranging book explores the social and psychological processes involved in the playing of games. One player (or team) seeks to outwit another by undertaking various physical and communicative moves-not unlike conversations. Games have well-formed "narrative" structures, analogous to myths, that are enacted by each participant to give play to his/her self and its attendant emotions. These plays of the self enable each agent to seek adventures and heroic moments. Going beyond the mythmaking and catharsis that may be achieved by individuals, the author shows how games have been devised and played in particular societies and eras as means of promoting specific ideologies of a society, even social ideals such as utopias.

Six friends cross over into a dangerous fantasy world — will they make it back alive?

Meet Dewey Jenkins, a 13-year old schoolkid who's about to fail science class. Follow him on an amazing adventure that leads Dewey and his friends to a virtual world where they will have to overcome all sorts of digital creatures and solve a number of puzzles in order to get home. My Video Game Ate My Homework is a funny, fast-paced adventure that shows the importance of cooperation and teamwork, as well as the importance of using your own unique abilities to solve problems. It's illustrated in Dustin Hansen's colorful, cartoony style, and filled with lots of sight gags and nods to video-gaming tropes. Dustin Hansen spent years directing and creating video games before becoming a writer and illustrator, and makes his DC debut with My Video Game Ate My Homework!

The last thing Zach expected was to find the girl of his dreams at Gamer’s Haven. When a brutal storm hits Saskatchewan, he learns that strategy is the key to winning over the girl and saving the day.

The Legacy of Heroes is a Fantasy Role Playing Game with a singular focus: imagination. The Legacy of Heroes Player's Guide offers everything you need to bring the myriad characters from movies, literature, mythology and anything else you can imagine to life on the page before you. This book contains 11 races, 11 classes, 40 heroic arcs and all the spells, styles, equipment, magic items and more you need for your own brave heroes to move from character to legend. The Legacy of Heroes exciting Heroic Talent and Heroic Moment systems empower the players to create truly memorable role-playing experiences like never before. This book facilitates that collaboration by giving you, the player, the tools you need for the stories you imagine in an efficient, simple, and familiar system based on the OGL license. The only question is, are you ready for your own legacy? Visit www.thelegacyofheroes.com for support, downloads and more!

In Extra Lives, acclaimed writer and life-long video game enthusiast Tom Bissell takes the reader on an insightful and entertaining tour of the art and meaning of video games. In just a few decades, video games have grown increasingly complex and sophisticated, and the companies that produce them are now among the most profitable in the entertainment industry. Yet few outside this world have thought deeply about how these games work, why they are so appealing, and what they are capable of artistically. Blending memoir, criticism, and first-rate reportage, Extra Lives is a milestone work about what might be the dominant popular art form of our time.

Winning at competitive games requires a results-oriented mindset that many players are simply not willing to adopt. This book walks players through the entire process: how to choose a game and learn basic proficiency, how to break through the mental barriers that hold most players back, and how to handle the issues that top players face. It also includes a complete analysis of Sun Tzu's book The Art of War and its applications to games of today. These foundational concepts apply to virtually all competitive games, and even have some application to "real life." Trade paperback. 142 pages.